2022-09-13 A Meditation on What We Have to Give

“Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.” (Ps 51:12 ESV)

When we ask what we have to give, we are met with all manner of obvious answer: “Testify!”; “Pray!”; “Study to show your self accepted!”; “Serve the greater good!”. Yet to avoid tedious prose or tedious narrative, to avoid empty words, to escape rhythms of bible study that inform not, to put religion into our service, requires a soul anointed by the Spirit, for “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;” (1 Co 12:4). That is, sometimes the laggard or pensive member of our services is the one with an observation, with a resolution that comes from a mind trained to pray for those in its midst.

This is hard. As we let our mind’s search and wander, discover and delight, it is a tall order thus to be tuned in to praying for our peer next to us, that our words will tumble forth with insight and with clarity of purpose and with Call and Anointing unto being that person who somehow in careful words does heal, who somehow in not wasting breath does bless and does absolve. All of us need this, and we too know the experience of being built up, having others focus on us rather than on themselves, being front and center because simply of that good turn that comes the way of our people, of our company, in certain times.

That is, who hasn’t been forgotten? Who hasn’t been neglected? Yet what we have to give is a question of the soul Touched and Transformed, an Experience wherein our testimony in fact is direct and heartfelt; our prayers are indeed an entering in unto the thoughtspace and bodyspace of our peer; our Scripture study does call us and beckon us and send us forth enlightened, inspired, knowledgeable; our service sets a high bar, a model and simplicity of behavior, no ambitious pursuit after greater rank but a gladness to be serving here and now, with these our companions.

What we have to give is the fruit of a heart Risen, Resurrected from all the chaos and impossibility ever of having a testimony. The heart finally in the final issue is turned outwards, is itself an open book; how we resented to have to confess to this habit or that mistake, now on the other hand, we are those gladly shriven, gladly confessed, and with happiness on our faces do share and do bravely go forth into the unknown, knowing that the unknown likely is just simple give and take, an absent parent figure, an absent friend figure, a realization that for all the bravery and lives on the line of this life, we are people with meek hearts; our hearts are not all brandished with machinery and armor; we are ministered to in the holy company of each other, via one who has good cheer, another with the gift of humor, yet more with extending friendship, one with story-telling or guidance, another with solemnity and reverence for what spirit dwells in this their peer. So in all this we have faith: facing down squarely a skirmish or a confrontation, we are the better for it, now stronger, now more bedrock, now speaking from post-selfish living; our lives are in our voices and our hearts in our countenances. We are those who have something to give, even when we feel we’ve run out of gifts or narratives.